Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, Sunday urged young cricketers to be ambitious while stressing the importance of education.
Bharrat was at the time giving the feature address during the launch of the BCB/Shimron and Nirvani Hetmyer Trust Fund at the St. Francis Community Developers Centre, Rose Hall Town. Bharrat who is the Patron of the BCB, said that like many young boys and growing up in Berbice, he also aspired to play at the highest level (the West Indies) and was faced with the same challenges as they do now.
Among those challenges was walking a few miles in the morning to go to the farm and returning from school to feed the cows, chickens, ducks and goats. While at the time it may have seemed tedious, the minister reckoned that those chores instilled a value of discipline and perseverance that is necessary in life.
“After Under-19, some cricketers lose discipline and discipline is a key element in achieving anything in life. I can tell you that from my own personal experience. I am a Berbician like you. I was born in Edinburgh Village At age six, I used to walk two-three miles into the backdam with my mother and father. I was attending Multi [New Amsterdam Multilateral], when I finished school in the afternoons, I had to go and look for my cows, cut the grass, feed the sheep and ducks like every other Berbician. But perseverance and discipline, that is important, that is what gets you where you want to go,” Bharrat told the gathering.
He added that ambition for any young person was necessary to achieve their goals but could only be done with inherent traits that could not be bought in a supermarket.
“You must have ambition. But having ambition, doesn’t mean that you’re an opportunist either. But once you have ambition and goals, you work towards it. That’s the only way you will get it. That’s the only way you’re going to achieve anything in life. You got to work towards it. So your first objective as a young person is to know what you want…The second thing is to know how you’re going to get it and I’m telling you how you get it is through perseverance, hard work, discipline, commitment, dedication and these are things you can’t buy in a supermarket,” he stated.
The former educator stressed the importance of having an education, pointing out that it is needed in every aspect of life.
“These are qualities you need to exhibit as young people, to achieve anything you want, not necessarily a cricketer, some of you might want to pass 10 subjects CXC. And as cricketers, cricket is not the only thing you should focus as a young person. Your education is important. You know sometimes when you look at the team and when one person is identified to be the captain you feel bad, but it is because whoever is managing that team sees certain qualities in that person that’s why that person was named captain. And I can tell you, every single thing that you do in life, you need some, some amount of education or sense. If you’re picking up garbage on your own, you still need some amount of sense. If you’re playing cricket you can be the best batsman in the world, but if you don’t have sense you will throw away your wicket every single time. Every single thing in life we need some amount of sense whether we call it common sense, or whether we like academic qualification or wherever we call it, you need some of that every single one. So the young cricketers need to ensure that you focus on education, because education can take you to the heights that you will never imagine, ” he related.
